Don’t forget the main elements in your celebrations:

• The Festivus Pole
• The Airing of Grievances
• The Feats of Strength

A Festivus for the rest of us!
UPDATE: Festivus history.

The Question (and today’s news channel obsession): What can be done to keep our troops safe in Iraq?
That’s the only way they will be safe. In case people missed this, there’s hundreds of insurgents trying to shot or blow the Americans up. And the guerillas are going to keep it up for the foreseeable future. I’m sure the military has done all the easy things it can to avoid the casualties. And if there’s any magic fixes left, those in the know aren’t going to be publicizing them on national TV anyway.
It’s the same old perspectiveless news phenomenon we see all the time. Had these 13 soldiers been killed in Iraq over a week or so–one or two at a time–it would have been business as usual and would only have warranted the obligatory footnote coverage leading into commercial breaks. But since they died in a spectacular attack, we’re suddenly awash in stories about “keeping the troops safe” and “is Iraq descending into chaos?”
It’s almost as though the media has the attention of a 12-year-old.

The current CNN “Quick Vote” poll addresses one of the divisive controversies of our time:

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas?
Yes
No

Right now the “nos” have it at 53%. [Cue Wolf Blitzer, “A reminder, this is not a scientific poll.”]
For my part, I could go for an 80 degree Christmas. But I’m not holding my breath.

E. J. Dionne Jr. injects reason into this “Merry Christmas pow wow:

At the personal level: What in the world is “Christian” about insisting on saying “Merry Christmas” to a devout Jew or Hindu who might reasonably view the statement as a sign of disrespect? At the level of government: Is it really “Christian” for a religious majority to press its advantage over religious minorities, including nonbelievers?
Personally, I am partial to seasonal celebrations that acknowledge our religious diversity by allowing traditions to express themselves in their integrity. This is better than allowing only a commercial Christmas mush that satisfies no one except the retailers. Trying to delete every form of religious expression from the public square leads to foolishness. But one thing is even more foolish: for the religious majority to feel “oppressed” by a public etiquette designed to honor the rights of those outside its ranks.
. . .
The great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that “the chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.” I fear that in these Christmas debates, Christians are behaving not as Christians but as a tribe: “We will pound them if they get in the way of our customs and rituals.”
Tribal behavior is antithetical to the spirit of peace and good will. In this season, we ought to be taking the most expansive possible view of our obligations to others.

A tribal mentality, no kidding. How far off kilter does your perspective have to be to wage a campaign against retail stores guilty of violating Christmas because they use “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas”? Yes, those we-make-half-our-profits-during-the-Christmas-season retail stores. We certainly don’t want them disregard the meaning of Christmas with their politically correct banners, do we?

According to Josh Marshall, the Social Security Administration help line has been converted into an infomercial promoting the need for Social Security “reform.”
Boy, I wonder how many other federal agencies advertise their need to be fixed when you call them? Does Medicare?
Oh yeah, I forgot. We already “fixed” that.